


God Help the Outcasts

by CedanyTheBold



Category: Wolverine (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Logan discovers his past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 21:00:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10474320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CedanyTheBold/pseuds/CedanyTheBold
Summary: Logan hasn't returned to the Institute for almost a year, and a worried Kurt goes off to find him. In a derelict church, Logan tells Kurt his story, contemplating his past that has become an urban legend and wondering if there ever was any good in him to begin with.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written in one sitting. This was one of those things that just kind of wrote itself (again). Allusions to and inspired by the comics, although I don't know which one as I've only seen a screenshot of it. It's the one where Logan and Kurt meet in a bar and discuss absolution and other stuff. 
> 
> Still kinda new to this fandom, in case you couldn't tell.

It wasn’t unusual for Logan to disappear. Sometimes he just up and left and would be gone for days, weeks, even months. Everyone had come to accept this as normal and gave him his space, except on those rare occasions when Professor Xavier called him back before he was ready. He’d return reluctantly, seething and sulking, and then go away again as soon as the mission was over. Little, if any, harm done.

But this was different. It was going on a year since he’d disappeared, and this time not even the Professor could track him down. For most of the mutants at the Institute, this was no big deal. Occasionally there would be a murmured “wonder when he’s coming back.” Kitty had mused aloud about missing him. No one was really worried. After all, this was _Wolverine_. He could take on anything and live to tell the tale.

No one was worried, that was, except for a certain fuzzy blue elf. He, perhaps, knew Logan better than anyone else bar the Professor—and his excuse was telepathy. Kurt had had a more difficult time getting to know him; he’d had to take the good old-fashioned friendship route. Nevertheless, he knew there was more to Logan than the simplistic, brutish animal he was often mistaken for.

That’s why he was worried. Logan might be okay physically, but his mental state was an entirely different story. This was the man who had once driven across the country for three days straight and insisted Kurt meet him at some dive bar, only to ask to be granted absolution for having killed twenty-seven people in a blind rage.

That had been a fun evening…

Kurt sighed. Whatever his friend had gotten up to, it was almost certainly weighing heavy on his mind. It had been long enough. It was time for somebody to find him.

************************

He checked all the usual suspects, those he’d seen, anyway. The dive bar in Seattle where they’d had their infamous conversation about the nature of good and evil over a pitcher. The trail Logan had dragged him hiking on somewhere up in the Yukon. Every pool hall, bar, and strip club that Logan frequented in and around Westchester. All came up blank.

Utterly spent, Kurt found himself teleporting to an old haunt of his, an abandoned church in Detroit. It wasn’t the safest place, he knew, but he was reasonably certain no one would bother him, and if they did…well…he looked like a _demon_ , for God’s sake.

With a muted puff, he landed in a crouch on the rubble-strewn floor. This place was in worse shape than last he’d been here; he would have to be careful not to step on any broken glass. Carefully he crept his way to the choir loft and swung down, his feet clinging to the balcony rail. He began murmuring a prayer, so quietly no one could have heard him. Or so he thought. A voice spoke up from the pitch darkness.

“Hey, elf.”

Kurt was so startled he nearly dropped from his perch. He righted himself and dropped gracefully to the floor below, feeling it buckle a little with the sudden impact. Gingerly he stepped closer to where he’d heard the voice. A shaft of light from the now-moonlight sky fell upon the head of a man sitting in a pew in a sick imitation of a saint.

The man beneath the moonlit window was no saint. He had once confessed to murdering twenty-seven people in cold blood.

“How did you know I would come here?” Kurt questioned warily.

“I didn’t,” Logan replied, popping the cap off a beer bottle with a long shining claw. He reached down and retrieved another, popping off the cap and handing it over. “Guess God works in mysterious ways after all.”

“ _Ach, du lieber Gott_ , Logan!” Kurt reprimanded, against his better judgment. “This is a _church_.”

“Was,” the other man corrected. “This was a church. Ain’t nobody here to see except us. Lighten up a little, would ya?”

“God is always watching,” he tried, being careful not to come off as sanctimonious.

“Yeah, and what’s He gonna see when He looks?” snarled Logan. “Two old jackasses havin’ a drink and shooting the shit in an abandoned church in the middle of the night. I bet teenagers do it all the time, when they’re not…”

“Logan,” Kurt spoke the name with such intensity that its owner looked surprised and shut up. “You’ve been away for almost a year.”

Logan sighed and leaned back. “I meant to come back a few months ago. I started back on foot, took the scenic route. Got as far as Toronto and hightailed it back west a ways. Don’t know why,” he lied, hoping to sound convincing. He didn’t want to face Charles and his goddamned telepathy. The farther away he was, the harder it was for Xavier to reach him. Must have been the adamantium skull.

“No sign of you for a _year_ ,” Kurt persisted. “A year with no word from you to anybody at Xavier’s school,” he said, perching on the rickety bench next to him. “Not one.”

“Chuck’s not my _dad_ ,” Logan griped. “And regardless of what he thinks, we’re not all one big fuckin’ happy family. I’ve been taking care of myself for probably longer than he’s been alive.”

“ _Vas_?”

“Yeah, about that…all the false memory stuff I’ve been investigating?” Logan drained the beer bottle. “Turns out I might be a lot older than I thought.”

“How much older?” questioned the elf incredulously.

“A _lot_ older,” he repeated emphatically. “After my last rage bender I lit on out of Xavier’s like it was on fire. Couple months later he says he might have a new lead on stuff from my past…long story short, I find myself in a cemetery in Bumblefuck, Alberta, looking for some guy named Howlett. Found him on some records, too…census, property titles, deeds. He had a wife and three kids, two sons and what looks like an adopted daughter…oldest son died in 1890-something and there’s no mention of the younger one or the girl on any records past about the same time…they disappeared into the fucking _Aether_. Anyway, these people were loaded. Had an estate somewhere nearby—tried scoping it out; it’s long gone. Cursed land, or some bullshit like that. Burned to the ground decades ago.”

“And this has something to do with your past?”

“Yeah…I got in over my head with this one. Started asking around, seeing if anybody knew anything about the place. Well, down at the local some redneck tells me that his great-great grandpappy or whoever worked in that house. The younger son was some kind of holy terror. Went nuts and stabbed the entire family one night. Disappeared off the face of the fuckin’ earth after the night they found the little bastard bawling his eyes out over his mother’s corpse.”

“That is terrible! But it could be a…just an urban legend, could it not?”

“Partially, yeah.” He sighed. “Everybody in the damn bar seemed to know about it. Some say the kid stabbed himself afterwards, others claim he ran off naked to howl at the moon. But there was one _remarkably_ consistent detail.”

“What was that?” asked Kurt.

“They all agreed—with utmost _certainty_ —that he had claws.”

“Oh…that does sound quite… _remarkable_ , indeed.”

“You bet your fuzzy blue ass it does,” Logan scoffed, cracking open another bottle. They sat in awkward silence for a long moment before he spoke again. “I’m not usually one to go chasing urban legends, but who the hell knows? Fuckin’ _Sasquatch_ coulda been a mutant. Turns out a lot of faerie tales have some basis in truth.”

“You said you have found names…have you found yours?” Kurt asked, finally taking a sip of the beer that had been offered to him.

“I think so,” he sighed, and his companion raised a slender blue eyebrow. “The kid existed, at least. His name’s on a census from 1880-odd. The berserker thing—I don’t know, it seems like a stretch. But it’s just too _bizarre_ to disregard entirely, you know? How many feral kids with claws do you think could be running around a tiny backwater that can all be traced back to the same goddamn _house_?”

Kurt considered this for a moment. “So…this boy is a bit like Boo Radley, _ja_?”

Logan stared blankly at him for a long minute and took a swig of beer.

“Sorry—Hank has started me on classic American literature. Boo Radley is a sort of living ghost in a small town. He is a recluse criminal that the neighbors make up stories about.”

“Yeah, sort of, I guess.” He raked a hand through his dark hair. “I just…I guess I always kinda hoped that I wasn’t an evil little shit from the get-go…but it certainly looks that way.”

“The name?”

“You’re really not gonna let this go, are ya?” He sneered. Kurt shook his head, a wide-eyed childlike gesture. “Okay. _If_ me and this kid are the same person—and I said _if_ —then my name is James Howlett.”

Kurt smiled a toothy grin that shone in the semi-dark and stuck out a three-fingered hand. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance at last, Mr. James Howlett.”

“ _No_ ,” growled Logan, turning away and crossing his arms. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s dead.” _And any innocence I had died with him, he thought._

“But you have found your true identity,” the blue mutant seemed confused. “I had thought you would be happy.”

“No!” The shorter man shot up from the bench abruptly, knocking Kurt from his perch and sending the beer bottles flying until they shattered against the wall. He clenched his fists and strode to the front of the church, popping his claws and sinking them into what remained of the altar.

“Logan, please, that is a relic!” cried the startled Nightcrawler, wringing his hands in an almost prayer-like gesture.

“I don’t give a shit what it is!” snarled the animal Wolverine, slicing at it further. “I should never have gone looking for my past, I should have let sleeping dogs lie where they fucking _belonged_!”

“Please, my friend!” begged Kurt, cautiously drawing nearer to the raging beast. “If what you tell me is true, then the boy James felt remorse for what he had done!”

“Shut up!”

“Listen to me! You said yourself you were told that the boy cried for his dead mother! He was sorry for causing such pain and destruction!”

“I said shut _up_ , twerp!” howled the monstrous form of his friend, turning on his heel and leaving the now decimated altar behind. Though half a head shorter, he advanced on him as though he were a giant. Kurt was soon backed up a wall with his face pinned between two razor sharp claws, the third slowly inching towards the soft underside of his chin.

“Logan, _bitte_.” he implored. “It’s _me_. Your friend, Kurt. Don’t _do_ this.”

Something registered in his brain, and the animal Wolverine gave way to the human Logan. He retracted his claws, careful not to slice Kurt’s face wide open, and stared at him in shock, his heart sinking.

“My God,” he gasped, almost a whisper. “I almost killed you.”

“But you didn’t,” Kurt said. “You were able to stop. You see? There is good in you. Whatever else you may have done in your life to convince you otherwise, you’re still a good man at heart. You always have been.”

“All right, Elf. Don’t get all sappy on me.” he said, straightening his jacket and rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably. “Look, I just—I need a little more time to sort things out, okay?”

“ _Ja_. Okay.” he smiled timidly. “But you will let us know when you plan to come back?”

“I’ll drop you a line when I think I’m feeling up to it,” Logan nodded. “Just—don’t tell anyone else where I’ve been. Please? I’m sure Charles already knows, but I trust him enough to keep it quiet. I don’t need Kitty or Rogue or anyone else sobbing all over me about my tragic past.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Kurt said, offering his hand. This time, Logan took it. “I promise.”

Logan’s involuntary smile flashed in the dark. “Thanks, buddy.”

**********************

Kurt stepped into the entryway of the church, heaving a sympathetic sigh. His friend needed time to think, and that was all right, but he knew that Logan’s life was missing something. Purpose. Fulfillment. Something he himself had only been able to get from his devotion to God.

But, he knew, Logan was not the kind of person you could just toss a bible at and expect him to sort himself out accordingly. On this front, their friendship balanced on a precarious line. If he pushed too hard, he could lose Logan’s trust and respect entirely. And he did trust him. So he did the best he could to be a kind and understanding friend. It was all he could do.

And with that thought in mind, he vanished.

**Author's Note:**

> Comment if you enjoyed! Please let me know if I got their characters right!


End file.
